It has been a while since the Future Salon tackled the meta question that Doug Engelbart asked himself years ago and us at a Future Salon: As much as possible, to boost mankind's collective capability for coping with complex, urgent problems.

I am really happy to have Zann Gill on Friday the 20th of March to bring her perspective to that question: Evolving Collaborative Intelligence. Check out her amazing life journey. Years ago she even worked for Buckminster Fuller. Please RSVP http://is.gd/lj0A

Zann and I sat together a couple of weeks ago and thought about what we can do in the framework of a Future Salon to evolve the Collaborative Intelligence. May be even evolve the framework itself. Here is what we came up with:

Nature manifests directed innovation, with a series of “process design”
principles that human-computer systems could emulate. Zann Gill will describe
how the evolution of life harnesses innovation networks, directed processes that
converge toward improved adaptation that could not be predicted in advance as a
goal. These principles are applicable to smart systems that support
cross-disciplinary, collaborative problem-solving as we face our greatest
challenge, eco-sustainability. Collective intelligence, which taps the consensus
“wisdom of crowds,” harnesses algorithms to transform diverse input into a
better-than-average consensual output. In contrast, collaborative intelligence
taps and retains the diversity of individuals, manifesting principles of
evolutionary design, such as collaborative autonomy, to co-evolve by improving
through time, innovating and adapting to continually changing ecosystems.

This talk will describe how Nature’s dynamic design process principles
apply to practical problems faced by enterprise systems (from companies to
social networks to cities and nations) to evolve more intelligent capacity for
emergent pattern recognition, decision-making, and to converge gradually toward
sustainable operations.

Objective. To seed discussion about the role SAP Future Salon plays
in enabling our collaborative intelligence to evolve smart meta-systems for
sustainable futures. Applications to explore include sustainable business
practices, rapid responder systems for emergencies, e-governance, and planning
eco-cities.